Key Facts

According to the Urbis Australian Shopping Centre Industry report (August 2015) there were 1,753 shopping centres in Australia which exceeded 1,000 square metres of gross lettable area (GLA). These comprised:

67 Regional shopping centres (i.e. those that include at least one department store);

286 Sub Regional centres (i.e. those that include at least one discount department store as the major anchor tenant);

1,104 Neighbourhood or supermarket-based shopping centres (i.e. those that include at least one supermarket as the major anchor tenant); and

107 CBD centres.

This number also includes 189 factory outlet centres and themed centres which are often categorised as shopping centres because they have adopted the shopping centre format (that is, usually a single, enclosed centre which houses a number of retailers). Note: This data excludes Homemaker/Large Format Retail centres.

These shopping centres contain more than 65,000 speciality shops. The advantage for retailers who lease space in shopping centres is that customer foot traffic can be much higher and more concentrated than in other retail locations. Leasehold also has the advantage that retailers don’t have to utilise capital to buy freehold, thereby reducing their property risk. This means the real estate risk is being carried by the investors in the shopping centre, not by the retailer.

Australian shopping centres contain around 18.7 million square metres of GLA, which accounts for around 37 per cent of the total retail space in Australia. This equates to approximately 94 square metres of GLA per 100 people in Australia, which is relatively high by world standards although not as high as in the USA and Canada. Below is a table of selected comparable markets:

Country

Market Size

Population

sq m of GLA

(million sq m)

(million)

per 100 Persons

USA

698.1

318.9

219

Canada

50.3

35.3

143

Australia

22.2

23.6

94

Singapore

2.8

5.2

54

New Zealand

2.2

4.4

50

United Kingdom

28

64.3

44

Japan

46.4

127.5

36

France

23.6

66.3

36

Germany

17.7

81.1

22

Source: ICSC Research – latest available Country Fact Sheet for each country.

According to the Urbis report, for the 12 months ending June 2014, total retail sales made through Australian shopping centres was estimated to be $120 billion, which was equivalent to 7.7 per cent of Australia’s gross domestic product.

As at May 2017, 10.2 per cent of the Australian workforce was employed by the ‘Retail Trade’ sector and approximately two thirds of these were employed in shopping centres. ‘Retail Trade’ is the second highest contributor to employment in Australia after the ‘Health Care and Social Assistance’ sector (13.0 per cent).

According to the publication SCN (Shopping Centre News), the five largest shopping centres in the year to December 2016 by moving annual turnover were: